The Imaginary Specter of Isolationism

The hawk's favorite myth

At The National Journal, Peter Beinart has a good riposte to those pols and pundits who raise the specter of isolationism whenever someone wants the U.S. to reduce its burdens around the world. Not only are today's "isolationists" not actually isolationists, Beinart writes, but neither were many of the alleged isolationists of yore:

Dr. Seuss

[I]solationism—as commonly understood—not only doesn't fit American foreign policy today, it doesn't even fit American foreign policy in the 1920s and 1930s. There are plenty of valid critiques of how the United States comported itself on the world stage between World War I and World War II. But the claim that America detached itself from other countries is simply not true. In 1921, for instance, President Harding summoned the world's powers to the Washington Naval Conference and pushed through what some have called the first disarmament treaty in history. In 1924, after Germany's failure to pay its war reparations led French and Belgian troops to occupy the Ruhr Valley, the Coolidge administration ended the crisis by appointing banker Charles Dawes to design a new reparations-payments system, which Washington muscled the European powers into accepting. American pressure helped to produce the 1925 Treaty of Locarno, which guaranteed the borders between Germany and the countries to its west (though not, fatefully, to its east). In 1930, President Hoover played a key role in the London Naval Conference, which placed further limits on naval construction.

Marvel Comics

Again and again during the interwar years, the U.S. deployed its newfound economic power to shape politics in Europe. And this overseas engagement wasn't limited to America's government alone. Although the United States severely limited European immigration in the 1920s, Americans built the avowedly internationalist institutions that would help guide the country's foreign policy after World War II. The Council on Foreign Relations was born in 1921. The University of Chicago created America's first graduate program in international affairs in 1928. And during the interwar years, American travel to Europe expanded dramatically. To be sure, the U.S. in the interwar years was more comfortable intervening economically and diplomatically than militarily. But despite the Neutrality Acts meant to keep the U.S. out of another European war, the Roosevelt administration began sending warplanes and warships to Britain two years before Pearl Harbor. By early 1941, long before America officially entered the war, its ships were already hunting German vessels across the Atlantic.

The only sense in which the United States in the interwar years truly remained apart from other nations lay in its refusal to make binding military commitments, either via the League of Nations or through alliances with particular nations. America wielded power economically, diplomatically, and even militarily, but it jealously guarded its sovereignty. That's why one influential history of the era dubs U.S. foreign policy between the wars "independent internationalism."….The popular "characterization of America as isolationist in the interwar period," argues Ohio State University's Bear Braumoeller in a useful review of the academic literature on the period, "is simply wrong."

All true, though at a time when you can hear a prominent pundit call the '90s a "decade of not policing the world," anyone who wants to correct the record on the '20s and '30s will be fighting a rough battle.

Moving to the present, Beinart analyzes Rand Paul's foreign policy positions, noting that they were not isolationist even when Paul first joined the Senate and have moved still further from the isolationist pole since then. I don't agree with everything Beinart says—not surprisingly, since my basic orientation is more anti-interventionist than his—but his central argument strikes me as both clearly true and widely underappreciated.

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I think the logic is that “isolationism” is a relative thing. If you believe in all-war-all-the-time, thinking that we might wish to limit our foreign military adventures or, heaven forbid, actually not involve ourselves in even some disputes, is probably “isolationist”.

I read a pretty good arguement that the US’ late entry into WWI and it subsequent meddling during the interregnum pretty much set up the conditions for making WWII inevitable with the rise of the Nazi party just making things *worse* rather than being a *cause*.

It’s likely that without American intervention that the Entente powers wouldn’t have been able to enforce strict reparations, and with Wilson out of the 1919 Paris Peace Conference there probably would’ve been a lot less stupid attempts at nation-building (the Middle East was probably still fucked thanks to the colonial powers and collapse of the Ottomans though).

I agree with Agammamon. Entering the war when we did (1) stopped the slaughter before the belligerents exhausted themselves enough to agree to quit on their own, and (2) gave “The Archangel Woodrow” leverage to muck things up with his messianic ineptitude.

sunny2 Hours Ago Mr. Harty, somewhere down the line you have had a very bad experience with a cop. Sorry about that since the majority of cops are good honest people trying their level best to keep the bad guys off the streets and you and me safe from harm. You mention that garbage collectors are more likely to die on the job than cops. In the past 4 yrs. 554 cops have been killed on the job. I would doubt seriously that that many garbage collectors died on the job. You also say that mail carriers and pizza delivery drivers manage to do their job without killing dogs. Probably true, but how many of these mail carriers and pizza delivery drivers are carrying guns and how many of these same people are in the act of trying to apprehend dangerous criminals while being shot at?

sunny2 Hours Ago If a dog is showing aggression towards an officer and the same officer has his adrenalin pumping trying to keep from getting killed himself, maybe you could show some empathy if you were put in the same situation. I believe some dogs are probably shot needlessly, but when you are in a dangerous situation and you have a split second to make a decision, sometimes the outcome is not what we would like given 20/20 hindsight. Just remember, when a garbage collector, mail delivery or pizza delivery person puts on their uniform and walks out of the house to go to work everyday, they are not anticipating that it could be their last day to live. Police officers do not have that luxury.

Yeah. Yesterday on the freeway a car drifted into my lane and almost hit my car. I had to make a split second decision. I decided to brake so the car could get into my lane and avoid hitting my car. I guess my other choice was to accelerate into the car and cause a major accident. But in the split second, the less lethal choice seemed better.

If you had been a cop, you could have shot the driver who drifted because you were afraid for your life, and the 13 car pile-up that resulted from the now fatally wounded driver veering all over the road would totally not be on you.

Just like, to a pro-amnesty, “amnesty” is only if you gift-wrap a full citizenship for those who violate our borders, so, also, “isolationism” is only if you have a force-field, that prevents any communication, let alone actual travel, outside the borders/shores.